LETTER: Strong opposition to new runway

Your letters

Published:06:00Thursday 07 August 2014

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You may be interested to hear the results of the Gatwick Airport runway consultation which are contained in the independent report by Ipsos Mori. The number of responses in favour of each option was as follows:

Option 1 - 194

Option 2 - 167

Option 3 - 733

None of these options - 6,200

This result is so embarrassing for Gatwick Airport Ltd that it has done all it can to conceal it. It did not mention it to the airport consultative committee or to the press. In its report to the Airports Commission it only appears in a pie chart on page 50, nowhere in the text.

It claims that 4,003 responses were the result of a campaign by The Woodland Trust, and can therefore be disregarded.

We do not agree: many of these responses contained specific comments and were thus not just the result of clicking a button. They are a foretaste of the nationwide opposition to any new runway.

Even leaving out the Woodland Trust responses, twice as many people voted for ‘none of these options’ as voted for all three runway options combined. And that was despite the ‘none of these options ‘box being difficult to find.

A total of 761 people agreed that a new runway would benefit the local economy but 2,020 felt that it would not benefit them much or at all.

These are remarkable results! They prove a strong and determined opposition to any new Gatwick runway.